Diverse Topics.

For thousands of years, the Scriptures have existed for many functions. Some individuals use them for spiritual purposes. Some human beings value them as an integral part of Bronze Age, eloquent literature. To this very day, researchers, genealogists, and archaeologists investigate its words. In other words, we know that Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nineveh, Ur, and Elam are real places as mentioned in the Bible too. The book of Daniel was named after the Jewish prophet and scholar Daniel. Its words are very similar to the Book of Revelation (which was written by the apostle John) with its symbolism and predictions of the future. Many years ago, I understood a lot of its message. Today, I have discovered more about the book of Daniel. Daniel saw Jewish people oppressed by the Babylonian Empire. The First Temple of Hebrew people was destroyed by Babylonian forces. Later, many Jewish people were kidnapped and sent to Babylonia unjustly. These human beings still follow their belief in the Most High God. The Jewish Diaspora spread globally as predicted in the Bible. Nebuchadnezzar was involved in the destruction of Jerusalem by ca. 586 B.C. Jerusalem was conquered. The 12 tribes of Israel would be split up. Later, Nebuchadnezzar (or the King of Babylon) had a vision. The astrologers, scholars, etc. couldn't decipher his dream. Only Daniel, the scholar, did. Daniel said that he was the head of gold (in describing the vision of the armored man). The vision had the head of gold, the breast of silver, the thighs of brass, the legs of iron, and the feet of iron mixed with clay. The vision was about the future empires ruling Jerusalem until the coming of the Messiah. After thousands of years after Daniel's birth, isn't it obvious that we are in this generation of the fig tree. Therefore, researchers have documented the prophecies of Daniel as a historical document of great importance. In our time, mysteries are being revealed all of the time.



For the eons of time, people know about the Knights Templar. From a group of people guarding Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land to being the large international bankers of Europe, the Knights Templar have a large legacy involving world history. The Knights Templar were made up of Catholic travelers involved in the bloody Crusades. They were a Catholic military order which was founded in 1119. They had a headquarters at Jerusalem through 1128. The Knights Templar readily wore a red cross and fought in the Middle East. They created possibly the world's 1st multinational corporation. They grew in so much wealth, and they negotiated with the Vatican constantly. Legends and rumors existed about the group from occultism, greed, and to various sexual rituals. Scholars debate to this day whether these rumors are true or not. What is true is that they ended officially by the 1300's. The Templars, like the old building guilds of Europe, built structures like churches and castles across the European continent. The old guilds evolved into modern day Freemasonry. There is a difference between speculative Freemasonry and operative Freemasonry. Operative Freemasonry relates to masons who use tools to build buildings and to study geometry. Speculative masonry relate to Freemasonry who didn't use tools per se but studied philosophical concept. Modern day Freemasonry existed long before 1717, but the Grand Lodge of 1717 is an example of speculative Masonry. They studied the philosophical studies of life in order to evaluate the meaning of how the Universe functions. Masons like 33rd Degree Freemason Albert Pike wrote about the Knights Templar constantly. Masons may not be an ideological ancestor of the Knights Templar, but Freemasonry utilized many of the words and imagery of the Knights Templar in their degrees and rituals. The Knights Templar remains a mysterious group that ended under the veil of controversy.


The start of the Knights Templar began during the start of the Crusades. By the First Crusade, the Franks captured Jerusalem from Muslim people in 1099. Many Christians started to make pilgrimages to many sacred sites in the Holy Land. Many people targeted the Christian visitors. Many of the Christian pilgrims were slaughtered by hundreds of people at times. That is why in 1119, something happened. The French Knight Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and proposed forming a monastic order for the protection of Christian pilgrims. King Baldwin and Patriach Warmund agreed to the request, probably at the Council of Nablus in January of 1120. The King granted the Templars a headquarters in a win of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Temple Mount has been believed to the the site of Solomon's Temple. So, the Temple Mount have always had a religious, spiritual mystique for a long time. The Templar Knights were called the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. Later, Freemasonry would always praise Solomon Temple as a representation of the components and imagery of the Masonic Lodge of the modern era of time. Originally, the Knights Templar had 9 people including Godfrey de Saint Omer and Andre de Montbard. The logo of the group showed 2 knights riding on a single horse, representing the group's poverty. Pope Innocent II allowed the Knights to travel via his papal bull of Omne Datum Optimum. The Knights Templar was a military brigade too. The defeated Saladin's army of more than 26,000 soldiers in 1177 during the Battle of Montgisard (where 500 Templar knights helped several thousand infantrymen). Bernard de Clairvaux, in his 1135 work, praised the Knights Templar as fearless and secure. Many Knights Templar worked in financial affairs, some sworn to individual poverty, and some handled the money of noblemen. Their business dealings and donations make them very wealthy. They owned lands in Europe and the Middle East. They developed farms, vineyards, cathedrals, and castles. They manufactured goods, imported goods, exported goods, and had their fleet of ships.  In Chapter XXX, “Knight Kadosh” of Morals and Dogma, Albert Pike wrote of the Crusader Knights of the Temple:

"...In 1118, nine Knights Crusaders in the East, among whom were Geoffroi de Saint-Omer and Hugues de Payens, consecrated themselves to religion, and took an oath between the hands of the Patriarch of Constantinople, a See always secretly or openly hostile to that of Rome from the time of Photius. The avowed objective of the Templars was to protect the Christians who came to visit the Holy Places: their secret object was the re-building of the Temple of Solomon on the model prophesied by Ezekiel..."


*There is a Merovingian link to the Crusades and the Knights Templar. Godfrey of Bouillon was one of the leaders of the First Crusade. He was the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1099 to 1100. He apparently avoided using the title of king, choosing instead that of princeps. Godfey of Bouillon was a descendant of the Merovingian Charlemagne of France. Therefore, Godfrey was a Merovingian. Godfey of Bouillon's allies were the Knights Templar. Pope Urban II was a French pope who ordered the Crusades from the beginning. There is no question that many Merovingians were involved in the Crusades.

Massive anti-Semitism including anti-Jewish pogroms existed during the Crusades. During the late spring and summer of 1096 (during the People's Crusades), crusaders destroyed most of the Jewish communities along the Rhine in a series of unprecedentedly large pogroms in France and Germany in which thousands of Jews were massacred, driven to suicide, or forced to convert to Christianity. Twelve Jewish people were murdered in Speyer, where the Bishop saved the rest of the Jewish people in return for a large payment from them, but in Worms some 800 were murdered. In Mainz, over one thousand Jewish people were murdered, as well as more in Trier, Metz, Cologne, and elsewhere. Others were subjected to forced baptism and conversion. The preacher Folkmar and Count Emicho of Flonheim were the main inciters and leaders of the massacre. The major chroniclers of the 1096 killings are Solomon bar Simson and Albert of Aachen.

Estimates of the number of Jewish men, women, and children murdered or driven to suicide by crusaders vary, ranging from 2,000 to 12,000. Julius Aronius put the number killed at 4,000, regarding other figures as too high. Norman Cohn puts the number at between 4,000 and 8,000 from May to June 1096. Gedaliah ibn Yahya estimated that some 5,000 Jewish human beings were killed from April to June 1096.  Edward H. Flannery's estimate is that 10,000 were murdered over the longer January-to-July period, "probably one-fourth to one-third of the Jewish population of Germany and Northern France at that time."  The clergy and nobility of Europe condemned the killing of Jewish people, and forbade it on subsequent crusades



The decline of the Knights Templar started as early as the 1200's. During the mid 12th century, the tide started to run in the Crusades. The Islamic world had become more unified with effective leaders like Saladin. Dissension grew among many Christian factions in and concerning the Holy Land. The Knights Templar at times were at odds with 2 other Christian military orders named the Knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights. Decades of internecine and feuds weakened these forces, both politically and military. The Templars were involved in many unsuccessful campaigns like the pivotal Battle of Hattin. Then, Jerusalem was recaptured by Muslim forces under Saladin in 1187. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II reclaimed the city for the Christians in the Sixth Crusade of 1229 without Templar aid. Yet, it held for a little more than a decade. In 1244, the Ayyubid dynasty together with the Khawarezmi mercenaries recaptured Jerusalem, and the city didn't return to Western control until 1917 (when during World War I, the British captured it from the Ottoman Empire). The Templars were forced to relocate their headquarters to other cities in the north, such as the seaport of Acre. They held it for the next century. It was lost in 1291, followed by their mainland strongholds in Tortosa (Tartus, Syria) and Atlit in present day Israel.

Their headquarters then moved to Limassol on the island of Cyprus, and they also attempted to maintain a garrison on tiny Arwad Island, just off the coast from Tortosa. In 1300, there was some attempt to engage in coordinated military efforts with the Mongols via a new invasion force at Award. In 1302 or 1303, however, the Templars lost the island to the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate in the Siege of Award. With the island gone, the Crusaders lost their last foothold in the Holy Land.

With the order's military mission now less important, support for the organization began to dwindle. The situation was complex, however, since during the two hundred years of their existence, the Templars had become a part of daily life throughout Christendom. The organisation's Templar Houses, hundreds of which were dotted throughout Europe and the Near East, gave them a widespread presence at the local level.The Templars still managed many businesses, and many Europeans had daily contact with the Templar network, such as by working at a Templar farm or vineyard, or using the order as a bank in which to store personal valuables. The order was still not subject to local government, making it everywhere a "state within a state" – its standing army, though it no longer had a well-defined mission, could pass freely through all borders. This situation heightened tensions with some European nobility, especially as the Templars were indicating an interest in founding their own monastic state, just as the Teutonic Knights had done in Prussia and the Knights Hospitaller were doing in Rhodes.

 

The 1960's soul and R&B music reflected the times of optimism, social change, pain, joy, and creativity at the same time. The start of the 1960's was massively different than the late 1960's. Early 1960's music had a Motown touch with men and women wearing their Sunday-best clothing. Ballads about love plus romance was commonplace from the Supremes, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, and the Four Tops. With the growth of the Civil Rights Movement, the counterculture, and the anti-war movements, music did evolve to promote more political causes like the songs from the Impressions (whose lead singer Curtis Mayfield change music forever). The 1960's expressed diverse styles of R&B , even proto-funk by the 1960's with people like Sly and the Family Stone. Aretha Frankin spoke about the dignity of a woman with songs like Respect. Aretha was an active member of the Civil Rights Movement. With the Tet Offensive, assassinations of heroic people, protests, and rebellion, everything that we see now in 2020 is a reflection of the 1960's.  Militancy was the order of the day by the late 1960's. The activism of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense captivated our people plus others. Love of Blackness was shown in James Brown's revolutionary song of: "I'm Black and I'm Proud." That song would inspire the youth to love their God-given Blackness a great deal. Dynamic soul encompass the expression of musicians from the Marvelettes to Odetta. There is no way that any human being can have a comprehensive look at music in general without listening plus studying the music of the the 1960's. Staxx Records and Jimi Hendrix's sounds flourished during that time period too. The demand for social changed outlined the essence of the human urge to be free. Oppression of any kind is wrong, and the 1960's R&B have shown the power of the black human spirit. In 2020, we continue to fight for the prize of liberation.


Motown is a word that stood the test of time as a large part of music. It showed music made by African Americans, and its songs have been beloved by people of every race or color. It broke down barriers and has been embraced by human beings globally. Also, it gave many musicians opportunities to not only tour the world. It gave them the chance to fully express their own personal identities. When you think of the music of the 1960's, you think of Motown constantly. It was created by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on January 12, 1959. It was Incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. It was originally an American American owned record label. It promoted soul music, pop, and R&B. Universally, people from across genres of music loved Motown. By 2018, Motown was inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in a ceremony held at the Charles H. Wright Museum at Detroit, Michigan. Berry Gordy is a businessman. He made a record store called the 3D Record Mart. Gordy visited Detroit's downtown nightclubs to study music. Later, he was a songwriter. He, his sister Gwen Gordy, and Billy Davis wrote songs for Jackie Wilson. Wilson's first hit was Reet Petite from November of 1957. Gordy helped to write Lonely Teardops in 1958.  Berry Gordy and his siblings Ann, Gwen, and Robert helped to write many forms of music for artists. Smokey Robinson met Gordy in 1957. Smokey was just 17 when he was in the group called the Matadors. Gordy loved doo-wop. Smokey was in the Miracles too. Anna Records was made by Gordy and his sister Gwen on April 1959. Gordy and secretary Janie Bradford wrote Barrett Strong's Money (That's What I want). Smokey Robinson was the vice President of Talma. Hitsville USA was the first headquarters of the Motown company. Motown signed Mable John, Eddie Holland and Mary Wells. By 1960, the Miracles' Shop Around was the first number R&B hit in 1960. The Marveletts hit Please Mr. Postman was famous in 1961. From 1961 to 1971, Motown had 110 top 10 hits. By 1960, Marvin Gaye signed with Motown. The Twist was popularized by Chuby Checker. In 1961, the Temptations signed with Motown. They were once the Elgins. Stevie Wonder signed with them too. The Supremes signed with Motown, and they were once called the Primettes. Eddie Holland recorded "Jamie." In 1962, Brian Holland, Eddie Holland, and Lamont Dozier started to work as songwriting, music production team. Motown toured the East Coast and the South with their Motor town Revue. Groups like the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas, the Supremes, Mary Wells, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Contours, the Marvelettes, and the Choker Campbell Band. The Contours released Do You Love Me. Demos grew by 1963. Mary Wells was on American Bandstand with Dick Clark in 1963. Martha and the Vandallas were nominated for Love is Like A Heatwave. The song was written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Edward Holland Jr. The Motown's Artist Personal Development started in 1964. Maurice King, Maxine Powell, and Cholly Atkins worked with artists. The Miracles perform in London in the same year. Smokey Robinson and Bobby Rogers of the Miracles wrote the Temptations hit The Way You Do the Things You Do. In 1965, Motown reached into new heights of power. Motown had its foreign label, Tamla-Motown in London. Brenda Holloway performed with the Beatles on their North American Tour. Motown released its first 8 track tapes. The Four Tops' I Can't Help Myself was released and the Supremes' "Stop in the Name of Love" was released in 1965. James Brown recorded, "Papa Got a Brand New Bag" in 1965 too.


By Timothy